Category: Action Alert

A once-clean bill in Iowa is going bad, with an agreed upon dirty amendment going to the Senate floor as early as Monday or Tuesday of this week. The bill would add statutory redaction rights for birthparents—i.e., the granting of an unchallenged power to alter an adopted person’s original birth certificate. The bill also has another problem I describe here: who else gets the OBC?

HB2725 granting all Texas-born adult adoptees equal and unrestricted access to their original birth certificates will be heard in the House Public Health Committee on Wednesday, April 10th. The hearing will begin at 10:30 am or upon adjournment of the House and will be held in room E2.026.

The bill creates a paternalistic forced reunion system in order for an adoptee to access her or his  own Original Birth Certificate–or rather in this case, a summary of it.  It contends birth record access is about an individual personal desire or curiosity rather than a civil right and political issue by conflating “reunion” with rights. It keeps Florida adoptees and their families hostage to archaic laws and customs, promotes continued shame in adoption, and maintains the iron lock of the state on our birth records and personal autonomy.